Re: Shooting for RBTs

[P3D Gregory J. Wageman <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Gary Nored instructed:

>1.  I always use a tripod and a bubble level when shooting. 
>    The level ensures that each side of the stereo pair is
>    exactly even, and that you won't have to make any vertical
>    adjustments when mounting. It's easier to do it right in
>    the first place than to have to "fix" it later.

Tilting the camera doesn't do anything to affect the vertical
alignment of the left vs. right image.  All it does is to make the
horizon tilted (assuming it's in the shot).  Vertical alignment
adjustments are only required if your camera has vertically-misaligned
lenses; in that case, once you find out the correct offset, you always
use the same adjustment when mounting slides from that camera.  This is
simple to do with RBT mounts.

There are legitimate situations why you would NOT want a shot to be
"level"; for example when photographing the front end of a car which
is parked on sloped ground such that the grille nearly fills the frame.
The car was parked such that the ground sloped from high on the left
to low on the right, looking straight at the car.  If you took
the shot with the camera "level", the car's grille would not be square
to the frame.  Since you can't see the horizon, in this case it doesn't
matter that the camera is tilted with respect to "level".

        -Greg W.


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